FOLLOW YOUR STUFF

Where does your stuff come from? That question is answered for five items in this chatty book.

The creative duo behind Follow Your Money (2013) team up again to create a book that takes common items in the Western world—a T-shirt, an asthma inhaler, a cellphone, eyeglasses, and, cleverly, this book itself—and follows each from raw material to finished product. Beginning with the seed planted in China to grow the cotton for the cloth woven in Guatemala, through the cutter and seamstress in India as well as the printer in Mexico and finally to the store at the North American mall where the T-shirt is bought, Sylvester and Hlinka demonstrate how globally and humanly intertwined it is. Aspiring authors will be particularly fascinated at what it took to make the book they are reading. Each item’s economic and physical journey is presented in a fact-based format with a lively design of dialogue bubbles, text, and illustrations (showing racially diverse kid consumers as well as workers from around the globe). Sidebars prod readers to think about the real cost of goods as they present facts about low wages and unsafe working conditions in developing nations, global environmental stresses, and other concerns, effectively challenging readers to consider what their money supports.

A thought-provoking breakdown of the real cost of all our cheap stuff.